


Rachel Berry's Ghosts

by franglemand



Category: Glee
Genre: Found Family, Grief/Mourning, Moving On
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-22
Updated: 2015-02-22
Packaged: 2018-03-14 13:51:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3413030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/franglemand/pseuds/franglemand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rachel thought that she'd finished mourning Finn after a few months. Then she returns to Lima and to McKinley and it turns out that grief isn't quite as straight forward as she'd thought.</p><p>Character study, spoilers up to 6x08. Discussion of grief, brief mentions of Sam/ Rachel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rachel Berry's Ghosts

Ever since she returned to Lima, there have been ghosts everywhere.

She performs for the kids in the choir room and is momentarily confused when she looks up at the end and doesn't find his face looking back at her in awe and delight.

She plays around casually singing with Kurt, Mercedes, the new Glee club and spins around to smile at the drummer, only to stutter when instead of Finn's smiling face she sees just another band kid (Gary? Gareth? She really needs to check that list she and Kurt left in their office after the first week) looking at her with curiosity instead of love.

She comes across her locker in the corridor and pauses for an instant, remembering the girl who eavesdropped on Finn and Quinn in that very hallway, hoping they would break up and he would turn to her instead. She remembers the matching calendars, and the fights, and the exact spot on the display cabinet where she tore down the poster of Finn and Quinn running for Prom court.

The memories are all around her; the stage where they kissed for the first time, her bedroom where they pretended to be married and had a ridiculous fight about pooping (she's shared rooms and bathrooms with friends and strangers since then; the memory of her honest horror at Finn using her bathroom to poop makes her smile now). Her therapist told her to pack away her pictures and special mementos in a dedicated grief box so she can take them out and look at them when she particularly wants to remember him but doesn't have to look at them all the time. She left his pig on her notice board though because that just makes her smile, and she couldn't face taking down the group photos of her New Directions family that featured him so his warmth is still on full display, even if his love for her isn't exactly. He'll always be the first boy she loved though, and the first boy who made her feel loved in return. 

When she first sees the bridesmaid dresses Brittany and Santana want her, Tina and Mercedes to wear she has to excuse herself with a hastily made excuse. It takes a few minutes of breathing in front of the bathroom mirror to stop the tears, to remind herself that they're just dresses and the resemblance to the ones she once picked out for  _her_  bridesmaids so long ago is no big deal, nothing to be upset about.

The worst thing is that she thought she was done with grieving. She'd stopped crying every time someone talked about dating and marriage. Her heart didn't falter any more when someone mentioned his name. She'd sung  _My Man_  every night on stage for months and thought of Finn every time until it became routine; she'd sing, she'd think of him, she'd be sad but then she'd be ok. It was normal. The tattoo on her skin echoed the permanent mark in her heart, and as the pain of the tattoo faded, leaving behind the letters that she could run her fingers over for reassurance, so did the pain in her heart. She could move forward, she could date Sam knowing there was at least a possibility of more, she could find somewhere new to rest her heart, which had been ripped away from its roots so many times and been untethered for so long.

(She'd mentioned something of this to Kurt, who'd smiled in a way that had nothing to do with joy but everything to do with love and hard won patience, and had told her that grief wasn't that simple. He still had days where he missed his mum, even though she'd died so long ago. He could plan a perfect wedding for Burt and Carole or for Brittany and Santana but he couldn't do it for himself because his mum would always be missing, and now Finn would as well. The irony, he'd pointed out in his dry way, being that he only misses Finn as a brother because his mother did die and his dad had married again. He can't even wish with an uncomplicated heart that she had never died because if she'd been alive, he wouldn't have had Finn or Carole in his life. He mourns Finn as a brother because he had to first mourn his mother. And the only person who might have properly understood that was Finn.)

Then there's the wedding, and thank goodness for Brittany sending her on all sorts of bizarre errands because no matter how much Mercedes told her Carole would understand, it felt weird and wrong to be parading her new relationship in front of Carole, who had lost her son, who would never have another to fill that space the way that Finn had. It felt selfish. And on top of that how could she defend it to Carole when she still wasn't entirely sure she wanted to defend it to herself?

Burt and Carole though, they see her and they acknowledge her and more than that they make her feel like she still could be family. Burt dances with her ("You look beautiful, thank you for being here for Kurt and the Glee club the past few months; we both know how much the Glee club can mean to the kids at that school.") and Carole dances with Sam, just as if they were her parents at her party (she's not ready to think "wedding" yet) welcoming her, as the daughter and daughter-in-law all at once, and Sam into the family. Carole takes her to one side afterwards as well and they talk; Rachel apologises for not staying in better contact lately, Carole does the same. They talk about how much Finn would have loved to see all of this and how he's still there in everything they do. They talk about how many guises love can take and Carole tells her she should never be ashamed or scared that dating another man means she loved Finn any less. Carole loved her first husband and that has never gone away; she still loves Burt with all her heart and she knows that Burt feels the same way. Hearts are funny like that. You think you've given all your love away but somehow you can always find more; it's not a betrayal of your first love if (when) it turns out that you grew a new store of love when you weren't looking and you've given that away to someone new.

They hug, and they cry, and they celebrate the happiness of their family who just celebrated their marriages. Carole goes back to Burt and they comfort each other over the son who's suddenly all grown up and starting a new family, and the son who just became officially theirs, and the son who should have been there but instead will always be missing. Rachel goes back to her friends, and she goes back to Sam. She smiles at him and drags him back onto the dance floor for a slow dance when he hesitates, scared of pushing her too far, of not being wanted. "Thank you," she tells him. "For what?" She smiles up at him and gently tucks that one strand of hair which keeps falling across his forehead back behind his ear. "For being here. For understanding. We're good together, right?" Sam smiles back at her. "Yeah, we're good. Want to hear what happened with Brittany's lizard today?"


End file.
